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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24893782">The Wild</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/innarufurry/pseuds/innarufurry'>innarufurry</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Original Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 01:41:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,238</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24893782</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/innarufurry/pseuds/innarufurry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A new fear entity starts to emerge.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Wild</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is my first fic. I'm writing and posting this more as a proof of concept for a fear entity I came up than as an actual fanfic. As such, don't expect regular updates. To see when in the series each chapter occurs, check the chapter title. Enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Statement of Trevor Fielding, regarding the degradation of his home and following events. Original statement given 15th February 2002. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.</p><p>Statement begins.</p><p>Y'know, I never really paid that much attention to the woods. Guess I had it coming.</p><p>My house is a decent-sized detached, with a front lawn and a back lawn. The back stretches from the house to the woods, which usually just means I get some nice scenery whilst I'm relaxing. I hadn't been in my back garden for a while because it's still the middle of winter, y'know?</p><p>About a week ago, I saw a nature documentary all about how plants reclaimed empty territories, like no-mans-lands and whatnot. All the vines creeping up the abandoned ruins. I fell asleep halfway through, I wasn't really interested and just wanted something to wind down to. Woke up to the credits rolling. On my way to bed I couldn't help but notice how chilly it was, even for early February. Not that I was annoyed, I like cold blankets.</p><p>The next morning, I woke up and the house was just as cold as last night. Spent a good piece of my morning trying to find where it was coming from. Closed all my windows and doors, that sort of stuff. Nothing. I just stuck the heating on and left it at that. At this point I was annoyed at racking up the heating bill, but I didn't think anything was particularly off. Went about my day as normal.</p><p>The next morning, it was <i>freezing</i>. The kind of chill you can feel in your bones. I stuck on a thick jacket and tried to feel out which room the cold was getting in from. No luck. It seemed to be stronger near the back half of the house, but there wasn't any one particular room that was colder than the others. Whilst I was checking the rooms, I must have glanced at the woods out back, because I remember the trees looking taller than I had thought they were. After looking I gave up, and booked a heating specialist to come tomorrow and give me a quote on the house. I think I might have stared into the forest for a small while that day.</p><p>Tomorrow morning rolled around, and it was as cold inside as it was outside. I might as well have had all of my windows open. I checked all the rooms again, and found small cracks in the kitchen floor, with tiny blades of grass growing through. The heating specialist was due in an hour, and I'd look like a complete fool to them if I complained that my house was cold whilst it had holes in the walls, so I got some filler from the garage, plucked out the grass and filled up the hole. I'm not sure if the specialist ended up noticing my terrible DIY. Doesn't matter I guess. The specialist couldn't find any particular place that the cold was coming in. In the end they recommended I stick my heating on and put on some layers for now, and they'd come and do a thorough check and possibly install a more powerful boiler if they can't find anything. I'd stayed in the back garden whilst the specialist had been around, just to stay out of the way. Forest caught my eye again. Just thought about the way that nature spreads, takes over everything in its path. Some of the snowdrops had spread from the woods into the back of the garden. Don't get me wrong, they're beautiful flowers, but I really just wasn't in the mood. Still cranky from the cold. I dug them up and threw them over the fence into the woods. That night I went to bed fully clothed.</p><p>The next morning, the cold was biting. As I said, I was fully clothed, but the chill tore at my bones. I got up to make myself a coffee and saw the snowdrops had spread again. They were hard to pick out amonst the morning snow but, I could've sworn they'd spread halfway up the garden. The grass had broken through my DIY sealing, and a cold breeze was blowing through the crack. I was sure I was seeing things at this point, so I just finished my drink and resealed the crack. I tried to get through the rest of my day as normal but I was shivering the whole time. Every now and then the windows upstairs would blow open from the wind outside, and I'd have to go and close them to try and keep some heat in. The woods seemed to loom over me as I worked. I'm an illustrator, so I work from home in my conservatory that looks out into the back garden and the woods. After about an hour I decided to call it a day. I just couldn't keep my hands from shaking.</p><p>I took my car down into Preston, the city nearest me. I bought myself a McDonalds and just sat with it at one of the tables, trying to warm up. Thankfully I did, so after I had a burger and a few of their coffees I headed back home. I knew I wasn't in the place to actually enjoy any of my hobbies so I just went to bed early. The cold blankets seemed to rub against me all night, and I only managed to get a few hours sleep.</p><p>The next morning my windows were open and me and my bed were covered in snow. I reckon I was half an hour from serious hypothermia. I had to dive straight in the shower and warm myself up. The hot water ran out after just a few minutes, and the cold water that followed it burned against my skin. I leaped out and got fully dressed again. At this point, I barely had any choice left, because I know I couldn't stay at home anymore. I booked myself into a hotel for a few nights. The last thing I saw driving away was a large patch of snowdrops in the middle of the front garden.</p><p>I'd chosen a Premier Inn in Preston, and cranked the heating on max as soon as I got in my room. I got in the bed to catch a few more hours of sleep. When I woke, the room's window had broken from a nearby tree branch knocking against it and the bed was covered in snow again. It seemed to come in horizontally, piling itself on top of me mercilessly. I showered and checked out. By this point I was crying, just looking for somewhere to stay. I got in my car and drove south, without any destination, just trying to get away from the growing blizzard. I'll be the first to admit, I wasn't paying much attention, so when I crashed the car on the motorway it was completely my fault. I'm just glad no-one else got hurt.</p><p>I'd driven through the hard shoulder and embedded my car in a tree in one of the woods. I got out and looked myself over. Sure, I didn't have any major injuries, just cuts and bruises, but emotionally I was a wreck. I think I screamed for a few minutes. Definitely cried a lot. None of the other people on the motorway stopped to help. I rang AAA but they said they'd be upwards of an hour, and I could feel the chill in my bones again, so I just hung up on them. I started to wander through the woods at the side of the motorway that I'd crashed into, trying to find some town or village. I pulled out my phone again to try to find the nearest town or village, but I couldn't get any signal. That was when I thought I'd lost my mind. This wasn't the mountains of Scotland, this was southern England! How did I not have service?! I threw my phone against a tree in rage, and hit the mark dead on. The screen was broken and it wouldn't turn back on so I just left it there.</p><p>After ten minutes or so of wandering aimlessly, I decided my best bet would be to head back to my car and see if AAA would have set off. I headed back the way I came, but after what must have been twenty minutes I still hadn't come across the motorway. I couldn't hear it either. All I could hear, all I could see was the ever-expanding forest. I walked for what felt like days through the dense undergrowth, trying to avoid all of the larger bushes and just head in a straight line. The trees seemed to stretch upwards forever. Each part of the forest was indistinguishable from the next. The bird calls were distorted and came from every direction at once. Every now and then I'd catch my jacket or jeans against a bramble bush and they'd tear, letting even more of that awful cold in. I couldn't feel my hands or feet. I was running on pure adrenaline, eyes darting at every shadow. God knows what creatures lived there.</p><p>What parts of the sky I could see changed to a deep blue and my legs had grown tired. I got the awful feeling that if I stopped moving some of the shadows that crossed my vision would start approaching. I did see a few of the creatures that lived there, actually, whilst the sunlight was still good. I walked past a stag beetle larger than me, about 20 meters away, and a snake wider than my torso swallowed it whole. As you can guess I ran from that, but even the beetle was enough to put some extra speed in my step.</p><p>Eventually the sky started to darken, and I had to find some shelter to wait the night out. I broke some of the lower branches off one of the trees, but they were thin and those which still had leaves only had pine needles, which dug into my skin. The trees seemed to change colours as they went up, going from light brown to white to green to black. I hadn't seen anything like them before. I gave up on constructing a shelter, and just laid down in a gap in the snow.</p><p>The night was filled with distorted birdsong and howling from animals I couldn't recognise. It seemed to stretch on for much longer than it should have. At one point a small creature passed by me. In the moonlight it looked like a mouse, except its head was wolf-like and its teeth were razor sharp. I laid low and held my breath and it didn't seem to notice me. I cried after that. I just wanted to go home, to get out of the forest and back into civilisation.</p><p>After what felt like an eternity the sun started shining through the trees. As I blinked my eyes from the sudden light, the trees were no longer stretching up infinitely, and were very clearly just dark pine trees. I looked about and heard the traffic of the motorway. I headed in that direction and found the motorway. I walked along the hard shoulder, found an emergency phone and almost screamed at the operator for help. I hope he forgives me, I can imagine I wasn't making much sense. Must've gotten the point across though, because I got a lift to the nearest town. I was admitted in a hospital for hypothermia and rested it off.</p><p>That's it really. After that I collected myself, went home, shovelled the snow out of my house, sealed up the cracks, and I've been fine since then. As I said, that was about a week ago from when I'm writing this. I thought you'd want this in your archives. Seems like the sort of thing your type investigates. The whole thing makes me think about how humanity has just sort of dictated that it has dominated the world and nature completely, but how much this domination is constantly pushed back against, and how little an individual can do to stop it. I dunno, mother nature's a force to be reckoned with, I guess.</p><p>Statement ends.</p><p>*sigh* Yes, this one is strange. Easily dismissable though. A string of coincidences leading to a severe case of prolonged hypothermia, leading to a mild state of mania, leading to hallucinations. Lucky that he survived the night I guess. Not much follow-up to be had here. Mister Fieldings refused all attempts at a follow-up interview. He did indeed call a heating specialist from Wentsworth and Sons on a date that lines up with this statement, and checked into a hospital in London with an extremely severe case of hypothermia a few days later. The Preston Premier Inn refuses to allow us access to its client database, but that's not really of importance here.</p><p>One thing that is odd, is that whilst Mister Fieldings was admitted to the hospital in London, his car was found crashed only a ten minutes drive from the centre of Preston. Whilst it is possible that the paramedics were particularly cruel, it strikes me as unlikely. I wonder, how long would it take to walk from Preston to London? Nevermind, it doesn't bear thinking about.</p><p>Recording ends.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>As mentioned, this is my first fic. What you've just read is my writing style, which I find is quite fast paced compared to most others. All chapters will likely be of this style. Thanks for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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